Skating-crazy Dutch defy pandemic by taking to outdoor ice A meter teaches her daughter to skate on a rink in Doorn, Netherlands, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021. With freezing temperatures forecast for more than a week in the Netherlands, ice fever is sweeping the nation, offering a welcome respite from grim coronavirus news while also creating a challenge for authorities trying to uphold social distancing measures. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) | Photo: AP By PETER DEJONG and MIKE CORDER Updated: February 09, 2021 06:20 AM Created: February 09, 2021 06:15 AM
DOORN, Netherlands (AP) - A deep winter freeze gripping the Netherlands is reawakening the national obsession with skating on frozen canals.
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Let’s be quite clear. A pool is not a beach. A beach is given by nature. A public swimming pool is a major investment of time and effort purely for the health and solace of others. As such, it’s a primary marker of civilisation.
Few pleasures compare with that of a gentle 10-minute stroll, a few outdoor laps, and a walk home. For me, at least, this is prime locational criterion. So I’ve always been mystified that we, with the perfect climate and culture for it, have so few public pools. More mysterious still is that we concentrate those few pools on demographics already aquatically blessed – with private pools, ocean pools and beaches.
World Heritage-listed Lord Howe Island wildlife flourishes after eradicating 300,000 rodents
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It has been 15 months since the last rodent was sighted on Lord Howe Island.
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The Lord Howe Island community is hailing an ecological renaissance after a $15 million eradication project to remove rodents from the World Heritage-listed island seems to be successful.
Key points:
The rat and mice infestation on the island had reached more than 300,000
The program is being credited for more than doubling the population of the endangered flightless Lord Howe woodhen
In 2019, rodent baits were distributed throughout Lord Howe Island to deal with an infestation of about 300,000 rats and mice, causing the extinction of some native species.
The lure was removed from the young wongari – as the island’s wild dingoes are known by the traditional owners – which will be monitored by parks staff for infection.